


Survivors

by Jahaliel, norcumi, ShaeTiann



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, M/M, Post-Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 02:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jahaliel/pseuds/Jahaliel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/norcumi/pseuds/norcumi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShaeTiann/pseuds/ShaeTiann
Summary: In which fates intertwine differently after the end of the world.





	Survivors

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of this was a plunnie on Norcumi's (original) blog, which Shae then ran away with for the second part, and then Jahaliel wrote a gorgeous poem for it.

He’s been working for the Alliance since it began. Saboteur, spy, soldier – he’s done it all.

He always knew it would end like this. Beaten down by pale echoes of good men, dead men. Tortured for intel he deliberately doesn’t have. Left to rot in a cell just long enough to make him look unrecognizable when they make an example of him.

After all, it would never do to have terrified subjects of the Empire know that clones could rebel. Would fight to keep the old government, the one that had birthed them, used them, and then abandoned them.

It had still been _theirs._  The Empire belongs to only one being, and that tyrant throws away clone lives even more casually than the Republic did.

The man who had once been known as Captain Rex curls up in the corner of his cell and tries to make peace with his impending death.

* * *

 

He’s not sure how long he’s been in captivity – SOP, and allows the garrison to save some credits with persistent but lousy lighting. He recognizes the rumble of explosives taking down an exterior wall – heard it enough during the war, caused it enough times since then, too. Rex pushes himself up, wondering why the local dissidents had changed their plans. He’s the most active agent in the sector, and he’d been caught trying to get intel. Since he failed, that means it can’t be for him.

He listens as the base lights up with activity, stormtroopers scrabbling everywhere as an unknown amount of assailants do…things. He’s not sure what those things are, but he suspects neither do the ‘troopers.

A chorus of beeps up and down the holding block heralds the door opening. Sounds like every other door in the corridor did as well. Rex hauls himself to his feet, staggering out into the hall in time to see a scruffy figure in the partial armor of a bounty hunter directing escapees towards a particular exit.

“Move this way, and hurry!” the bounty hunter shouts, and Rex’s blood freezes.

Humanoid, most likely male. Dressed in tans and grays, with a Mandalorian based helmet.

He knows that fucking get up.

This cannot be happening.

 _"Move!"_  Rako Hardeen roars, and Rex is swept up in the mass of beings trying to escape.

There’s a whole group of bounty hunters overseeing the extraction of prisoners. A bunch of both groups don’t make it, but by the time Rex splits off the mob leaving the garrison, it’s looking like neither did a lot of Imps.

He can’t decide what to do about Hardeen. It’s most likely the actual Hardeen – the man’s sentence has to be up by now, though Force knows that Imp bookkeeping is insane.

And yet. Rex can’t quite tamp down an impossible, crazy hope.

“You there! Halt!”

No cover, and the distinctive mechanical buzz to a stormtrooper behind him, along with the whine of a blaster charge priming. He’s too battered to escape. Rex turns, hands up. Gods take it; it’s a whole squad behind him. Decent odds that they were sent to make sure the Rebel spy was dead.

He knows a firing squad when they’re aiming at him. Before he can brace or attack, a flurry of headshots takes all the bastards down from behind.

Somehow, Rex isn’t surprised to find Hardeen standing behind them, lowering a smoking pistol. Rex lowers his hands, and Hardeen tilts his head. “You’re a clone.”

“You’re very observant,” Rex snarks back.

Hardeen’s helmet tilts, then he rattles off a bunch of numbers. Some of it’s nonsense, as far as Rex can tell, but smack in the middle is the sequence he’s been using to coordinate with the local dissidents.

On the one hand, it was nice they hadn’t left him for dead.

On the other, that was what they should have done. Not to mention out of all the bounty hunters they could have sent, _Hardeen ?_

On the third hand, a ridiculous part of Rex desperately wishes it were someone else under that helmet, and it’s nice to pretend.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Jokes about collections have become a common aspect of his work, but when the survivors of genocide have scattered to the furthest corners of the galaxy for their own safety, recovering even one requires the endless patience of a museum curator.

Padawans whose Masters had covered for them long enough to hide. Knights who had been alone in the field and only learned of the turning tide from HoloNet broadcasts of Palpatine’s speech. Clone troopers who had resisted the Order, or whose chips had failed. Alone, they could be picked off one at a time, lost in shadow and report footnotes.

Together, they had once been nearly unstoppable. They could be so again.

The Order can’t be re-formed. Not openly. But another mercenary company operating in the fringes of the galaxy is just another group of people in masks. The clones teach the Padawans to wield blasters instead of lightsabers, the Knights set aside their robes in favour of armour. And they search: even half a mention of a lost brother, the faintest whisper of a hedge-wizard healing the locals, is worth following up.

All faces were welcome, but there’s only one in particular he hopes to see.

Word reaches them of another potential clone: a group of resistance fighters said he’d gone missing on an intel run. Nobody needs to say another word: a single glance around the briefing room has survivors readying weapons and gear, prepared to rescue yet another of their decimated family and bring him home.

Their contacts don’t have a name for the former trooper – they’d never asked, and he’d never offered, safety in anonymity and ignorance. The garrison the Imperials are using is old, a former Separatist base, and some lazy manager hasn’t even bothered changing the codes. Staging a prison break for the sake of chaos is ridiculously simple.

Fighting through the swarms of Imperial stormtroopers is less so. He has to blink away phantoms, memories of previous battles – was it the Citadel? Grievous’ flagship? Geonosis (again)? – and it takes him a moment to realize that one phantom isn’t fading.

Stormtrooper armour isn’t designed to anything like the old GAR standards. He should feel badly for every blaster-pierced helmet, every body that falls – it isn’t like fighting droids – but the prisoners all bear the marks of torture and long incarceration. It’s frighteningly easy to block from his mind the little voids death creates in the Force.

The phantom’s hands are still up as the last body falls in a clatter of plastoid; he lowers his blaster and gives the man another look. Cheeks hollowed from poor nutrition, like all the other sorry bastards running for the blown-open exits; overgrown beard and hair, pale with the premature aging all GAR clones had been cursed with; old bruises and badly-healed cuts but no identifying tattoos; eyes too sharp, like a feral animal unsure if the extended hand means safety or threat.

“You’re a clone.”

“You’re very observant.” Still sassy, that’s a good sign, and the Force ripples with a hint of recognition, but there’s too much going on for him to parse out what it might be.

The resistance group had lost more than one person to this Imperial oubliette. He offers the list of code numbers their people had used and is rewarded when the clone recognizes one of them. There’s a look on the other man’s face of something like surprise and something like disappointment; no, the local dissidents would have left him, for their own safety. But this isn’t about the locals.

The other man follows him without a word to their extraction point. A report comes in that four others on their list have been found among the prisoners, as well as three Alliance operatives who had been presumed dead several months previous. Some good news, for once. Regardless, everyone who survives to reach the drop ships is coming with them. He stops to haul a prisoner, wounded in the leg, over his shoulder, and is surprised when the clone moves in on the other side, sharing the load.

They don’t remove their helmets while non-Alliance rescues are around; it’s better to remain anonymous. The clone and the other Alliance operatives get twitchy when they’re singled out of the crowd once they connect with the transport. The other prisoners will be taken to one of the numerous black-market stations that have sprung up in the wake of the Empire’s destruction of the old Republic waystations. The Alliance people are taken instead to a part of the fleet where it’s hiding in the mass shadow of a nebula; there’s a General waiting to debrief them.

He stands at the back of the room, tuning it out: he’s heard this spiel before. His turn comes afterward, once the clone’s been checked over by the frigate’s medical staff.

“You haunting me, Hardeen?”

The clone is glaring at him, squint-eyed, from where he sits on the medical bed while a droid draws blood and runs scans. He feels a twist of surprise that the former trooper knows Hardeen – but the bounty hunter had been released years earlier at Vader’s whim and given free rein to hunt the survivors of Order 66. He doesn’t dare to hope the name might be known for any other reason.

He shrugs and says, “Just waiting my turn.”

“Oh yeah?”

“We have an offer for you, once they tell us whether you’re about to keel over or not.”

The clone seems to find it funny, snickering before swearing at the medical droid over yet another hypo. That last one will burn for a while, nerve endings prickling uncomfortably: the others have mentioned the aging stabilizer isn’t pleasant for a week, but still better than the alternative.

The droid provides a long list of health concerns but nothing that exercise and a healthy diet won’t fix. The clone rolls his eyes and follows him down the corridor to the hangar where their group’s ships are currently waiting.

“Gonna tell me what this is about, now?”

He motions the clone through to the pilots’ ready room. It’s filled with people in armour, their helmets off. Some are grinning, others are tense, waiting to see what the clone’s reaction is.

Cody. Ahsoka. Wolffe. Mace. Gregor. Caleb. And dozens more.

The clone stops dead in the doorway, stunned with recognition. “What….”

He pulls his helmet and tucks it under his arm, running a hand over his hair to straighten it. “We’re the Survivors. You’re welcome to join us.”

The Force gives a tangible snap as the clone recognises his voice without the vox filter; Mace winces and rubs his temple with a cybernetic hand, but Obi-Wan barely notices as the clone turns.

It’s Rex. It _is_ Rex. He’d tried so hard to ignore the familiar quirks, trying to spare himself the pain of inevitable disappointment, yet again, and a part of his brain is still shrilling in denial, insisting this has to be a hallucination. Wishful thinking, maybe a dream?

The clone reaches up, touches his hair – it’s shorter now, easier to maintain under a helmet cap, and going definitively grey at the temples – a look of wonder in his eyes. “Where have you been?”

He manages a smile. “You didn’t expect me to sit in a wasteland for a decade feeling sorry for myself, now, did you?”

The helmet hits the floor and bounces away as Rex seizes him in a hug they would never before have allowed themselves in public, and the Force hums with quiet joy at the reunion.

 

* * *

* * *

_**Survivors**  
_\- Jahaliel

A man runs - quietly through the back ways and alleys  
The pain of loss, the loss of hands does not hinder him  
He will not let it, not yet, not yet.

Young ones hidden down deep cry in relief when they  
See him - together they find a safe way off Coruscant  
The dark will not have them, not yet, not yet.

A chip dies, a brother cries and finds a few of same mind  
They will seek to atone the wrongs they committed, won’t  
Swallow their blasters, not yet, not yet

She runs, he runs and literally bump into each other  
On a planet far from the Core - together they will  
make the Empire regret, but not yet, not yet 

He stands on the shifting stands stretched out like stars  
And knows that he will not stay here - Luke is safe, his  
Training the force says to wait, not yet, not yet. 

On Alderaan they come together - Master and Grandpadawan  
Councillor and Knights and clones, who cannot believe they’re  
Forgiven - not yet, not yet 

Shortly after a group of Bounty Hunters begins to run  
Clones teaching, Jedi feeling and rebellion begins to rise  
They will seek to end the Empire but not yet, not yet

They wonder about some of the lost - where could they be  
Seeking out leads but its never the one he most wants to see  
He will not let himself give up hope, not yet, not yet 

And when Rex is with him, when they are embracing  
As the others gather around with laughter and teasing  
It is clear to all to see, the Light has not faded, not yet

 


End file.
